Clusters, Instances, Sessions, and Load Balancing

A server instance is not required to be part of a cluster. However,
an instance that is not part of a cluster cannot take advantage of high availability
through transfer of session state from one instance to other instances.

The server instances within a cluster can be hosted on one or multiple
machines. You can group server instances across different machines into a cluster.

A particular load balancer can forward requests to server instances
on multiple clusters. You can use this ability of the load balancer to perform an
online upgrade without loss of service. For more information, see “Using Multiple
Clusters for Online Upgrades Without Loss of Service” in the chapter “Configuring
Clusters”

A single cluster can receive requests from multiple load balancers.
If a cluster is served by more than one load balancer, you must configure the cluster
in exactly the same way on each load balancer.

Each session is tied to a particular cluster. Therefore, although
you can deploy an application on multiple clusters, session failover will occur only
within a single cluster.

The cluster thus acts as a safe boundary for session failover for the server
instances within the cluster. You can use the load balancer and upgrade components
within the Application Server without loss of service.